Work Text:
When Grace didn't open the door after the fourth knock, Rocky knew something was wrong. The Xenonite suit felt small, almost suffocating, as he tried to see any kind of movement from the man who was supposed to be inside. The lack of sound was eerie in a room, a world, where Grace had always been so vibrant and expressive. A hesitant trill escaped from his carapace. The sound traveled through the air but everything it reached was still, too still.
"Grace?" Rocky's voice crept further into the house. He froze when it reached the bedroom. He felt stuck when his line of sight reached the bed and the figure that was lying there, motionless. For only a moment Rocky tried to tell himself that his friend was just sleeping but he knew that wasn't right. Grace was too quiet.
Rocky stood frozen for several moments, his arms fidgeting and his carapace emitting a quiet sad wail. Then he steeled himself as he got the door opened and stepped inside. The house was dark apart from the his own sounds bouncing off of the walls. It took a while for him to reach Grace's bed and when he did, he stood frozen once again as he took in the sight of his beloved friend. Grace's breaths didn't travel towards him in rhythmic waves and the beat of his heart didn't echo like a pulse against Rocky's carapace anymore.
Maybe he should've seen this coming more than he had. He'd known that Grace was getting old, seen the way he was hunching more and more into himself and how his legs weren't able to carry him as far as they had before. It had always been a thought he had never wanted to or been able to truly entertain. A part of him had thought that Grace would find a way to stay with him forever even if a thought like that logically didn't make sense.
As time went on, he had thought he would be able to brace himself for this moment eventually but to see this, to actually experience it, was not something he could've ever prepared for. An immense sadness filled his entire being knowing that there was now nothing he could do anymore. This was it. He couldn't help Grace this time. There was nothing he could fix.
Grace's hand lay with his palm upright next to his body. Rocky reached out with his hand carefully and put it in Grace's. His legs dropped him to the ground. It was like his body finally got the confirmation his brain had already unconsciously supplied him with when Grace didn't respond. He knew he would be staying here for a long time. Probably until Adrian physically had to pull him away. He had to take care of what was left of Grace for one last time. Had to watch over him in his final eternal sleep. Then… then he had to say goodbye.
It was as Rocky was still next to Grace's body that he let his thoughts wonder. The memories they'd shared together filled his mind. The adventure they'd been on and somehow not only survived but saved two whole civilizations along the way. Rocky had meant what he said on Grace's spaceship that one time. He could never forget. He wouldn't let anyone else forget either.
That's when one name floated to the surface. A name Grace had told him about shortly after they'd arrived on Erid. Rocky remembered the pain in Grace's wavering voice bouncing off of everything in their vicinity, everything from the sand underneath them to the stones that surrounded them. It had been a pain that had drowned out everything else, even the crash of the waves against the beach.
Colt Seavers. Grace's twin brother who he had never been able to say goodbye to before he'd been forcefully sent away. Rocky shuddered at the thought. Grace had told him what being a twin meant. He'd told him about how it had always felt like there had been an invisible thread connecting them together. That way he'd never had to be alone because he'd had someone who knew him better than he knew himself. He'd told Rocky how that thread had been severed ever since he'd woken up on the spaceship and for the first time in his life he'd known what true loneliness felt like. He'd been able to remember his brother but not feeling that connection anymore felt like a part of his soul had been mangled, disconnected from him forever. Rocky was sure Colt must feel the same way.
His mind was quickly made up. He would make sure Grace returned to Earth. It would take a while to get everything ready but he was sure they could do it. He hoped that Colt was still out there, looking up to the stars for a sign of the brother he had lost. At least this way they'd be able to rest next to each other like they were supposed to. Reunited with the one person they never should've been separated from in the first place.
Colt was old. Almost as old as the rickety chair he was currently sitting in on the porch outside the house where he'd lived most of his life. There was another chair next to him, empty. It had been empty since they'd bought the house. He still liked to pretend that Ryland was sitting beside him. Like they would've done if they'd grown old together. He still saw Ryland everywhere, in everything, especially himself. He'd catch himself sometimes looking into a mirror and wonder if the same lines decorated Ryland's face the way they did his.
Instead he only had the stars left. He'd been sitting here during the evenings a lot more often these last couple of months, when the night sky was the brightest. It was as if there was something up there that was pulling at him. Insisting that he look. It felt like what was left of the bond to his brother.
The door creaked open and soft steps moved towards him. Jody's hand landed on his shoulder and Colt instinctively wrapped his own hand around hers. Her warm touch was forever a balm against the constant ache he'd had to learn to live with but never really went away. Colt looked away from the horizon and met her gaze with a smile. There was a frown between her eyebrows and a slight hesitation in the way she looked at him.
"She wants to talk to you," Jody murmured. Colt's smile dropped. There was only one person Jody could be talking about with such reluctance. What did Eva Stratt want this time? Hadn't she taken enough of his family's time already?
The last time she had contacted him had been to give him a copy of the recordings Ryland had sent back with the Taumoeba. At the time, Colt had thought she'd called to apologize, to finally say that she was sorry for sending his brother on a suicide mission. But he should've known better. Of course she wouldn't. She would never apologize for something she believed had been the right thing to do. Instead she'd given him something even more invaluable. Something he never thought he'd get to see again. In a way, he was thankful for that. Not that it absolved her of the grief she'd inflicted though. Nothing ever would.
Colt sighed and squeezed Jody's hand as she helped him get up. They walked back into the house together, leaning on each other like always.
"Yes?" Colt asked into the phone after he picked it up from the counter. He wasn't surprised that Eva Stratt was still alive and kicking. Sometimes it felt like she could outlive all of them. If Ryland hadn't sent the Taumoeba back, she probably would've been the last person still standing on Earth.
"They sent him back," Eva spoke on the other side. She was direct as always. Colt froze, his heart dropped in his chest. "We noticed his spaceship on our radars several months ago and we we were just today able to bring him back down here."
"What?" Colt breathed out, his voice trembling as he clenching his hand around the phone to keep it from shaking. Jody's hand was on his back but he barely felt her comforting warmth.
"I'm sending someone to pick you up tomorrow," Stratt continued, as if the bomb she'd just dropped on him was just another Tuesday. It was quiet then. Stratt was probably waiting for him to say something. For some kind of immense gratitude to stumble through his lips or at least for him to confirm that he understood what she was saying. That's not what finally broke the silence.
"Is he… is he still alive?" Colt asked. His old heart was beating sluggishly in his chest as if it finally remembered how to after decades of non-use. Blood was pumping through his veins in a way it hadn't done since the day Colt saw his brother be shot into space to never return. Except now he was apparently back.
"No," Stratt sighed.
Colt's eyes started burning with unshed tears. "But he's back. I can see my brother again?"
"Yes," Stratt said, then hesitated for a moment. "There isn't much left of him."
Colt didn't need any convincing. He and Jody were picked up and driven to the facility were they were keeping the missing piece of his soul. The connection between him and Ryland was frayed, stretched thin by time and space and barely noticeable anymore but Colt had always been determined for it to not fade completely. Maybe it was all in his head. A delusion he clung to in order to feel like he still had something to hope for. Now he was convinced that that hope was what had brought him here.
They were greeted by Stratt herself when they arrived but they didn't waste time for pleasantries. She immediately took them to some kind of medical center. It barely felt like he needed Stratt to guide him. It was like his body knew where he was supposed to go. They stopped at a door and Stratt looked towards him, waiting for him to take the first step.
Jody was at his side. The anchor in his grief that kept him afloat. Her warm embrace during the coldest and darkest days had enveloped him in the softest of blankets and kept the worst of it at bay. It was within her embrace that he always found the last of the strength he needed. He nodded towards Stratt and she opened the door. Colt took a deep shaking breath as he stepped inside, only grounded by Jody's hand wrapped around his arm.
A white shroud was covering Ryland's body up to his shoulders. The tears were falling freely down Colt's cheeks. They hadn't really stopped since the phone call.
"Will you give me a moment?" Colt asked without looking away from Ryland. He heard Stratt walk out of the room without a word. Colt turned to Jody with a wet smile. Her eyes were red rimmed as her hands wiped his cheeks clean before she kissed him tenderly. A moment later she too walked out of the room, closing the door behind her with a dull click.
A deep sense of closure filled his entire body. To see his brother returned, to be in the same room as him even in this condition, to finally be able to touch him and say goodbye removed the heaviest burden he'd had to carry for so long. Something finally fell into place properly in his heart once more.
It was hard to speak through the lump in his throat but he could also finally breathe freely, without the ever present ache in his lungs that reverberated into the deepest depths of his soul where Ryland was supposed to be within reach. Because now he was. Even if it wasn't the way Colt had wanted him to return, for him to return at all was beyond anything Colt had ever dreamed of.
Colt's hands shook as he uncovered the sheet. It was clear that he had been dead for a while. His skin was pale, devoid of color, and his face looked sunken in but other than that he looked a lot like the Ryland that Colt still remembered. The same person he'd grown up with, played with and laughed with. The lines Colt imagined had been there had been smoothed out and his muscles had thinned considerably but his brother still looked surprisingly good. Maybe the aliens he'd spent his last years with had found a way to conserve his body until it arrived here.
Colt wrapped his hand around Ryland's cold wrist. His thumb caressed the soft skin. The lack of a reaction broke his heart as the lump in his throat and the tightness in his chest threatened to suffocate him but somehow the words came easily. He spent the next however long, potentially several hours, talking about his life. What he'd accomplished, about the people he had loved, the kids and grand kids he wished Ryland could've met. How he'd made sure to keep Ryland's memory alive to the people closest to him and anyone else who was willing to listen. The memory of the version of Ryland that he'd always known and not the hero he'd become against this will.
"I love you, Ry," Colt whispered with a sniffle, "I'm glad you came back to me. Thank you for finally letting me say goodbye."